They had to withstand the San Diego Gulls’ early game energy, bolstered by a rowdy crowd of 7,621 that filled almost the entire lower bowl at the Valley View Casino Center.

And they had to withstand the lightning quick catching glove of San Diego goalie Matt Hackett, who stopped 42 shots, including pure robbery on any number of occasions. Yeah, there’s a reason the guy’s wearing a mask.

But Game 2 of the AHL Pacific Division final was one of those examples of staying the course, keeping the pressure on, pounding that rock until it cracks. Eventually it did, when Justin Auger smacked a rebound past Hackett at 11:55 of overtime to give the Reign a 2-1 victory and a 2-0 series lead.

For two periods Hackett was impenetrable. Nick Ritchie’s goal 3:22 into the game, just three seconds after a penalty to Nick Ebert expired, gave the Gulls a 1-0 lead, and the goalile who had been a backup to Anton Khudobin was often magnificent.

“It’s pretty challenging when a guy gets hot like that,” Reign center Nic Dowd said. “Personally, he made four or five saves against myself. It’s tough.

“But the only thing you can do is keep chucking pucks on net, and hopefully good things will happen.”

Eventually, for the Reign, they did. Vincent LoVerde unleashed a shot from the point that Kris Newbury tipped past Hackett 1:39 into the third period to tie the score.

And Auger took advantage of a rebound in overtime, after Adrian Kempe won a key offensive zone faceoff and Kevin Gravel shot from the right point, just getting the puck through bodies and to the net.

“The puck kind of just bounced right on my stick and I just took a whack at it,” Auger said, with the self-effacing nature that is foreign to athletes in other sports but second nature to hockey people.

Patience and persistence served the Reign well.

“I don’t know if discouraged is the right word,” Reign coach Mike Stothers said. “We might be discouraged if we weren’t getting any shots. But you’ve got to be doing something right if you’re getting some shots.

“I don’t care how good a goalie is or how good he’s playing. If you put enough pucks on net, something’s going to get by him. Discouraged? No. Reload. You run out of bullets? Reload. Empty the magazine. Let’s go.”

But, he added: “It looks like he could win the gold glove in center field with that glove of his. Perhaps he’s a ballplayer, too.”

Matt Hackett’s glove: Where scoring chances die.

“There was a lot of traffic in front of him, too,” San Diego coach Dallas Eakins said. “It’s not just stopping the pucks; it’s handling those bodies that sometimes make it to the net. So he was excellent again tonight.”

But when your goalie is other-worldly and you still can’t come away with a victory, at home, after being undefeated all season with the lead after two periods … well, it can be tough to regroup.

Mainly, the Gulls are finding that the Reign’s heavy style has been difficult to crack in the postseason. San Diego excelled in a free-wheeling first round series against Texas, a team that can light up the scoreboard. But Ontario is limiting the number of chances available, keeping its opponents to the outside and, when possible, keeping the puck away from them, period.

“There’s not a lot of room out there,” Eakins said. “I think they’re the best defensive team in the league, and that’s not by accident. We’ll continue on, but I think we can expect more of those games. These games are going to go to overtime, they’re going to be one-goal games. We’ve got to get ourselves on the other side of it.”

It’s in games like these where players who have been through this before, who won a Calder Cup a year ago in Manchester, call on their experience.

“A lot of these guys have been through four rounds, have been through winning a championship,” said Auger, who had 19 playoff games with Manchester in 2015. “We’ve had a couple of overtimes, and we know what to expect.

“It’s magnified in overtime. One turnover, one shot, the game could be over. We’ve been there before, and that’s a big part, an experience factor that a lot of guys bring this year.”

Back-to-backs shouldn’t even be that exotic. Manchester had six of them during last year’s playoffs, including two games in two nights in two cities, like this. In the 2015 first round the Monarchs beat Portland at home in Game 2 and lost at Portland in Game 3.

That commute, like the one that will have the Reign and Gulls getting together at The Vault Sunday at 7, is about an hour and a half.

“It’s going to be a mental game,” Dowd said. “Guys will be ready to play physically. We’ll see how they respond mentally.”

Jim Alexander is an Inland Empire native who started with his hometown newspaper, The Press-Enterprise, longer ago than he cares to admit. He's been a sports columnist off and on since 1992, and a full-time columnist since 2010. Yes, he's opinionated, but no, that's not the only club in his bag. He's covered every major league and major sports beat in Southern California over the years, so not much surprises him any more. (And he and Justin Turner have this in common: Both attended Cal State Fullerton. Jim has no plans to replicate Turner's beard.)